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- Google is testing a change in Android 15 that moves the Glance widget to the bottom of the lock screen.
- The at-a-glance widget is currently at the top, just below the date.
- Live Activity on iOS – a similar feature – is also placed below the lock screen.
Android widgets provide quick access to app shortcuts or useful information directly from your home screen. Until the release of Android 5.0 almost a decade ago, the Android operating system allowed you to add almost any widget to the lock screen. While some manufacturers like Samsung are keeping the lock screen widget dream alive, Google hasn’t shown much interest in reviving the feature.
As we first reported earlier this year, Google has finally brought back support for lock screen widgets in Android 15, though the feature may be limited to tablets. While Android 15 may not allow phones to add widgets to the lock screen like tablets, the operating system may offer another way to do so. The method Google uses should be familiar to anyone using an iPhone, as the method looks similar to Live Activity on iOS.
Before I explain further, I need to clarify how Google plans to handle lock screen widgets for Android 15 tablets. Widgets are not displayed directly on the tablet’s lock screen Instead, it appears in a separate pane that you can access by swiping in from the right edge If you’re curious, this article I wrote earlier goes into more detail about how lock screen widgets work for Android 15 tablets.
This method doesn’t really work on phones because they have much smaller screens. However, the approach iOS has taken to bring widgets to the lock screen is very elegant, so it wouldn’t be amiss if Google used the same approach. In fact, Google already has a good starting point for building at-a-glance features.
At a Glance, if you’re not familiar, is a widget-like element found on the home screen of Pixel devices (Google also offers a simplified version of At a Glance for third-party users, but less use it). ) cards you swipe at a glance are based on the Smartspace API. Android widgets, on the other hand, are based on the RemoteViews API. SmartSpace doesn’t currently support RemoteViews, but that’s something Google is quietly trying to change behind the scenes. For example, if Google turns off support for RemoteViews in the Smartspace API and then allows viewing of raw widgets from third-party apps at a glance, the third-party widgets will effectively appear on the lock screen.
Of course, it’s not as easy for Google to “just” include RemoteViews support and then display third-party widgets at will. The company must ensure that all built-in widgets fit within the limited area available “at a glance” on the lock screen. It’s also important to make sure that third-party widgets don’t crash at a glance and potentially all over your lock screen. Additionally, you need to work with more OEMs to include “at a glance” on their lock screen.
Another challenge Google has to consider is where to place the revamped Glance. Currently it appears below the date on the lock screen at the top. Google is experimenting with Glance below the lock screen, reminiscent of Live Activity on iOS.
We had to enable some flags in Android 15 beta 1.2 to have a glance below. Therefore, we are not sure if this is more than just a test or if Google actually plans to go ahead with the repositioning. To better display Reposition Mode, we’ve also disabled the two shortcuts on the lock screen as they can sometimes overlap. Additionally, the lock screen looks a bit busy with notifications in the middle and a swipeable circle at the bottom.
Because of this, we believe there’s still some work to be done before Glance is ported, but it’s a promising step towards bringing lock screen widgets back to phones. We don’t know if these changes will happen, but it’s possible that we won’t see this launch until the next major release of Android after Android 15, for example. Android 16 in 2025.